Street Justice: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Nelscott, Kris

  “I promise you,” I said, “I’ll ask for your help when I need it. Like I just did.”

  He pressed his lips together, as if he was trying not to be angry at me. He hadn’t been talking about looking at flyers. He’d been talking about going after the criminals, like I had gone after Voss last night.

  I would pretend to misunderstand him as long as I could.

  “I’m gonna do something no matter what,” he said.

  That was what I was afraid of. “We’ll do it together,” I said.

  “I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  AFTER JONATHAN left the van, I placed the files of the girls he believed to be truly missing in the folder. I put the ones of the girls he didn’t know underneath the folder, and the ones of the girls he believed to have just dropped out on top.

  Just dropped out. As if that was nothing.

  I thought about Decker’s revelations and Jonathan’s comments as I drove to the hospital. That both of them accepted the drug dealing and the disappearances as facts of life disturbed me greatly. I suspected it only got worse in high school. Add to that the gangs, the guns, the pregnancies, and it was a wonder any kid made it out of the South Side at all.

  The street lights came on as I turned the van into the hospital’s visitor parking lot. These short days also affected my mood. The sunlight had been thin, the air freezing, and now it was growing dark. It seemed like it had just been dark.

  At least I got to park in the visitor’s lot instead of near the emergency entrance. That felt like a luxury.

  Still, I knew this hospital better than I wanted to. I had been in Chicago less than two years, and I had already spent too much time in hospitals—and never because someone had gotten sick. Every single time I had come to the hospital, it had been because someone—including me—had been a victim of violence.

  I sighed and hurried through the twilight toward the main doors. I stopped in the gift shop and picked up a pink stuffed dog. It looked young for Lacey, but right now, she needed comfort, not age-appropriate material.

  Then I went to the information desk, asked for Lacey’s room, and was given a number on the third floor of the children’s wing. Ironic that she would be there, given the nature of the violence she suffered.

  I took the stairs two at a time and pushed open the swinging doors into the wing. The hospital made an attempt to make this place cheerful. Murals painted on the walls depicted balloons, clowns, and kids playing.

  As I got closer to Lacey’s area, I realized that each room had a famous cartoon character painted on the door. I passed Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam before I reached Bugs Bunny, and Lacey.

  Her door was closed. I could barely see around the painted mural, but what I did see showed me Althea, sitting beside Lacey, holding her hand. I didn’t see Franklin.

  I slipped inside. Lacey was hooked up to an IV of some kind. Her left arm had a bandage around the bicep. I was about to ask Althea how Lacey was doing, when Lacey turned her head.

  It was all I could do to suppress a gasp. The entire left side of her face was black-and-blue. Her left eye was swollen shut, and her cheek and mouth looked deformed.

  She tried to smile, even though it clearly hurt. “Hi, Uncle Bill.”

  “Hi, Lacey,” I said and sank into the chair on the other side of her bed. She had a private room. I had no idea how Franklin had arranged that, but I was glad that he did.

  A radio sat on the bedside table. Some books sat on the table as well. They looked new. Flowers lined the shelf built above the radiator. A recessed window showed just how dark it had become outside.

  I handed her the stuffed dog. No one had brought her stuffed animals yet. She hugged it, looking like a very little girl. A tear slipped out of her right eye, but I didn’t know if that was a tear of pain, of sadness, or just residual wetness from all the medication she’d been receiving.

  Her hands, holding the dog, were scraped raw, and her wrists were black-and-blue.

  “Lacey’s doing better,” Althea said, although better than what I had no idea. “She actually ate something at lunch and is looking forward to dinner.”

  “The anesthetic must be leaving your system,” I said. “I’m never hungry when I’m full of that stuff.”

  Lacey’s eyes were closed. Althea looked across her at me. Althea seemed to have aged ten years since I saw her last. She shrugged, as if to say she had no real idea how her daughter was.

  Lacey sighed, then opened her eyes. “I look pretty bad, huh, Uncle Bill?”

  This was the girl who had gone into a hotel with a strange man in the hopes of becoming a model. Appearance was extremely important to her.

  I touched the scar on my cheek. The scar, which ran from my temple to my chin, had faded. But, despite the doctor’s best efforts, the scar was the first thing most people saw when they looked at me.

  “You should have seen that when I was in the hospital,” I said. “I looked like the mummy when I was all bandaged up. I was afraid I’d scare Jimmy.”

  “Nothing scares Jimmy.” Lacey sounded like she believed it. “Mom says I can’t see him.”

  “Kids aren’t allowed in patient rooms,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember, but they tried to kick him out of the emergency room.”

  She smiled, then winced. “I remember.”

  She sighed, then petted the stuffed dog as if it were alive.

  “Mom, can I talk to Uncle Bill alone?” she asked.

  Althea stood. “We’re not supposed to upset her,” she said to me, but the fierceness wasn’t there. Althea seemed to know that Lacey was already upset; all we could do was either alleviate it or make it worse.

  “I’ll be good,” I promised her.

  “I’ll be in the cafeteria,” she said. “Come get me when you’re done.”

  “I will,” I said.

  She left, pulling the door closed behind her.

  Lacey blinked and another tear rolled down her cheek. “You be honest with me, Uncle Bill. No one else will. You tell me. How bad is this?”

  I leaned against the hospital bed. “I don’t know your prognosis. I came up here without checking.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “My face. Is it ruined?”

  “No,” I said. “You were hit pretty hard, but the swelling will go down.”

  She nodded. “That’s what Mom says too.” Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and seemed to steel herself. When she opened her eyes, there were no tears in them.

  “I’m getting really mad when someone touches me,” she said, her voice shaky. “Mom says it’s the anesthetic. I did it in the emergency room with the doctor before anesthetic. I went crazy.”

  “It’s not crazy,” I said. “I’ve seen this before. It’s a normal reaction to being attacked.”

  Her mouth turned down. “Does it get better?”

  “Eventually,” I said.

  “Eventually.” She repeated the word as if it were a death sentence. “Daddy won’t even look at me. It’s my fault, Uncle Bill.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “I believed him.” And with that, we weren’t talking about Franklin anymore. “He lied to me, and I believed him. How stupid am I?”

  “You’re not stupid,” I said.

  “I am. It was obvious where he was taking me. I should have thought it through. I should have known.”

  I sighed. Logic wouldn’t work here. I touched my scar. “The day I got this,” I said, “I went into the home of a man who made me uneasy. I knew he would probably try something, but he still caught me unaware. I never expected the knife, even though I should have. I thought I had taken every precaution, and he could have killed me. He nearly blinded me.”

  She tilted her head a little. “What did you do?”

  “I got rescued, just like you did. And then I spent the next few days in my hospital bed going over
every detail in my head, berating myself for being so stupid.”

  Another tear slide out of her good eye.

  “Could I have done things differently?” I asked. “Probably. I certainly wouldn’t do it the same way now. But one morning I realized that if I spent all of my time beating myself up for handling that wrong, then I was no better than he was.”

  She jerked her head back, as if I had touched her. “What do you mean?”

  “He hurt me,” I said. “He hurt me badly. And I survived. I could chose to continue to hurt myself or I could move forward. It sounds easy. It’s not. It takes effort every day. And this scar, I’m aware of it whenever someone looks at my face for the first time. I could apologize for it. I never do.”

  “I’m scared of everybody,” she said in a tiny voice.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I don’t know how to stop,” she said.

  “You can’t order yourself to stop,” I said. “You have to figure out what will make you feel safe again, and that’s not something you can answer fast.”

  She wrapped her bruised arms around that dog. We sat silently for several minutes.

  Finally, she said, “Mom says your neighbor knows people who can help me. Dad thinks it’s dumb. What do you think?”

  “I’m the one who decided to bring Marvella in,” I said. “I think she knows how to help you, better than any of us do. She’s been through this, more than once.”

  “She’s been…attacked?”

  “I don’t know the details,” I said. “But I know she’s helped a lot of people.”

  Lacey let out a small breath. “I don’t want to do something my dad thinks is stupid. That’s how I got here.”

  “No,” I said. “You got here because a horrible, evil man targeted you. He decided to hurt you and he did. It had nothing to do with anything you did, your relationship with your father, or defying the rules he set for you. You have to remember that.”

  “If I had worn the clothes my parents—”

  “He still would have targeted you.” I rested a hand on the railing. That was as close as I could get to touching her without scaring her. “He did this before.”

  “What?” she asked in a small voice.

  “He’s attacked other girls,” I said.

  Her lower lip trembled. “Who?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said.

  “Then how do you know—?”

  “I found out after I left here yesterday,” I said.

  She frowned, then winced, then petted the dog. “Will he do it again, then?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  I wanted to tell her. If anyone deserved to know, Lacey did. But I didn’t dare tell her. Not explicitly anyway.

  “I made sure of it,” I said.

  “How?” she asked.

  “You’ll have to trust me, Lace,” I said. “You’ll never see him again.”

  “And the other girls?” she asked. “Has he still got them?”

  “He doesn’t,” I said. “I’m going to find out who they are and what happened to them exactly.”

  “I keep thinking…he kept telling me…I was, you know, ‘his.’ And I was going to do what he said. Did he do that to them?”

  “Probably,” I said, trying to stay calm.

  “You’ll find them, Uncle Bill?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  She nodded. “Jimmy’s gonna be just like you. He said that once, and I believe him now.”

  I closed my eyes for a brief second. I didn’t want him to be like me. I wanted him to go to Yale and become a big shot and have a real life, not one like mine.

  I opened my eyes. She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the dog as if she didn’t see it at all.

  “Lacey,” I said, “would you be willing to answer a few questions?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice filled with tears.

  “You can say stop if you don’t want to think about the question,” I said.

  She nodded. She continued to stare at the dog.

  “How did you meet him?” I asked.

  She squared her shoulders, then plucked at the blanket. “This girl I know. She introduced us.”

  “Is she in your class?” I asked.

  Lacey shook her head. “She dropped out, you know, a year ago.”

  I tried to keep my voice neutral. This was important, but I didn’t want to alarm Lacey.

  “So how did she introduce you?” I asked.

  Lacey’s mouth thinned. She didn’t want to tell me.

  “I promise. I won’t say anything to your dad. Whatever you tell your parents is up to you.”

  “Promise?” she whispered, still plucking the blanket.

  “Promise,” I said.

  She nodded, her head bowed. “There’s a liquor store a couple of blocks away. I go there sometimes.”

  I almost blurted, You buy booze? But I managed to stop myself just in time.

  “They have a cigarette machine right near the door,” she said, as if she heard my question. She couldn’t see my face, and I had struggled very hard not to have a physical reaction. “Dad would have a fit if he found out that I smoke.”

  “I won’t say anything,” I said again.

  She bobbed her head once. “She was there one day with…him. And I said hello, and she…” Lacey looked up at me, eyes narrowed. “Shit. I mean. Crap. I mean. I’m sorry.”

  She was apologizing for swearing.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “She made that little gesture, you know? That go-away gesture?” Then she raised both hands and waved them as if she were warding something off. “I thought she wanted me to go away because she didn’t want me to meet her boyfriend. She always hated me, you know, thinking I was after the same boys she was.”

  Normally, I would have asked her if she was. But I didn’t dare derail her.

  “She wanted me to go away, didn’t she?” Lacey asked. “Not because she hated me, but because she knew…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she turned toward the window. Her shoulders shook slightly, as if she were stifling a sob. But I couldn’t touch her. I didn’t dare, not without her permission.

  Then she took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Anyway, he asked her if he could meet me. And I was such an idiot. I thought he was interested in me, you know, because I was pretty.”

  He probably had been. But I didn’t tell her that. Because he hadn’t been interested in her as a potential boyfriend would have been. He had been interested in her potential.

  “She introduced us and then she hung back, and finally she wandered down the aisles. He talked to me, and then he said…”

  “What?” I asked.

  “He said I was, you know. Pretty. He asked if I liked movies, and I said I did, and he said maybe he could take me to one someday. Then Karen came back and told me to leave him alone. She looked really mad, so I left.”

  I made note of the name, but I wasn’t going to interrogate Lacey. I was going to let her tell this her way.

  “Was this a week or so ago?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Before Christmas. Then, I saw him on the ‘L’ during the holidays and he took me for lunch. He bought me stuff.”

  She twisted one hand over her injured wrist.

  “He seemed really nice.”

  I nodded.

  “He wasn’t nice,” she said, and brought her knees up to her chest. Then she cried out in pain and straightened them. “I—can’t, Uncle Bill.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to say anymore.”

  Even though I wanted to know more. I’d have to ask later.

  Lacey kept rubbing her wrist. Then she said, “Her name is Karen Frazier and I haven’t seen her since. No one has. Not for, you know, a year or so. I was surprised to see her that day. You think she’s okay?”

  I couldn’t lie to Lacey, but I didn’t wan
t to tell her what I really thought. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll do my best to find out.”

  “God,” she said, and fell back against the pillow. “I’m so stupid, Uncle Bill.”

  “Lace, we talked about that—”

  “You remember that day you took us to that house?” She talked over me like she hadn’t even heard me. “In December? When those guys, those Panthers, were killed?”

  Althea and Franklin had been so mad at me. I took the older kids on a tour of the house where Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered. Thousands of us went through it because the police forgot to seal it off. The Black Panther Party had opened the house so everyone could see what the police had done, could see the lies.

  I figured the kids had to know what kind of world we lived in. I figured they had to know the dangers of gangs and the white police, and how what you saw told you what was true when the authorities lied.

  I hadn’t realized that the kids were already living in the same world as Clark and Hampton. I hadn’t realized that they already knew.

  “I remember taking you there,” I said softly.

  “I thought that was so lame,” she said. “And gross. All that blood. And it smelled.”

  She had walked through, eyes mostly averted, head down.

  “I thought, stuff like that only happens to stupid people, people who carry guns and threaten the cops and don’t get good grades and stuff.”

  The grades almost made me smile. It reminded me how young she was.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Bill,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “You were trying to show us that stuff happens to everybody and I thought it was lame.”

  “It’s all right, Lacey,” I said.

  “I should have listened,” she said. “I should have.”

  She had started back into the recriminations.

  “Lace,” I said, “things happen to all of us. Jimmy and Keith, they got you out of there. They rescued you.”

  She nodded. “They’re amazing.”

  “That hotel room lives here, though, right?” I tapped my forehead. “You’re still in there.”

  She didn’t move.

  “We’ll get you out,” I said, making a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep. “Me and Marvella and her friends and your family. We’ll get you out.”